Potential application of ocular and cervical vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials in Meniere's disease: a review.

By stimulating the ear with air-conducted sound or bone-conducted vibration stimuli, vestibular-evoked myogenic potential (VEMP) can be recorded on the contracted neck muscles, termed cervical VEMP (cVEMP), and on the extraocular muscles, termed ocular VEMP (oVEMP). These two electrophysiological tests expand the test battery for clinicians to explore the dynamic otolithic function, adding a potential usefulness to the sacculocollic reflex and vestibulo-ocular reflex, respectively. The inner ear test battery, including audiometry, and cVEMP, oVEMP and caloric tests, is designed for complete evaluation of the inner ear function, namely, the cochlea, saccule, utricle, and semicircular canals, respectively. Using this test battery to study the localization and prevalence of hydrops formation reveals that the declining function in the cochlea, saccule, utricle, and semicircular canals mimics the declining sequence of hydrops formation in temporal bone studies. This study reviewed the physiological results in Meniere's patients via the inner ear test battery, especially the potential application of the oVEMP and cVEMP tests, to correlate with the histopathological findings of Meniere's disease.